Stay (just a little bit longer)
by The Wizard of Koz
Summary: Beth's alive and well in the Alexandrea Safe Zone having faked her death. It's kind of a weird story. Daryl's pretty much the only one who doesn't want to hear it. (Maybe this is implausible but we're all entitled to our crazy theories). One-shot for now but I may continue.


**Disclaimer: You know how this goes. I own nothing and make no money from this, hell I don't even want my name to be associated with the mess The Walking Dead has become. I don't consider this my intellectual property so if anyone wants to borrow any aspect for a fic of their own please do and I hope writing it brings you some comfort.**

**Authors Note Relevant to this fic**: As you could never pay me enough to watch TWD ever again the events of Coda and the political situation at the hospital escapes me a little so this is probably full of holes and isn't plausible. I have absolutely no time for a show that would disrespect fans that have done nothing but give it their time, energy and love; a show whose creators say things like 'Beth is alive for a reason' to cajole vulnerable young women who have themselves felt like 'opting out' of this world into watching a character they'd come to identify with die in such a repugnant way. I hope others stop watching too and their viewing figures suffer. Anyway I'm given to understand that Dawn had few allies…yet was somehow maintaining power…somehow and protecting Dr Edwards from…the other cops? Because for some reason they didn't feel that the only doctor they had was a valuable asset? Or maybe it was because he made them run out and get him Renaissance paintings.

**Stay (just a little bit longer)**

'You ever gonna actually talk to me or are you just gonna….skulk?'

She doesn't say it in a mean way. He thinks he'd like it better if she did, then he could call her a bitch and let loose everything he's got festering inside him right now.

It wasn't like they walked through the Alexandria Safe Zone's gates and there was Beth, hands on her hips and a wide smile teasing them with;

'_What took you guys so long?'_

They were there for three days before Noah went to the infirmary armed with his Grady experience to see if he might be of use to them. He returns to their temporary accommodation with all the blood drained from his face and asks for Maggie.

When he tells her what he's seen there…who he's seen there, she shakes her head over and over again before she cracks.

She screams;

'Why the fuck would you say that!' and tries to take a swing at him but Sasha and Glenn hold her back while she loses her god damn mind and Daryl feels like the hastily put back together pieces of himself are about the break all over again.

It's Glenn who checks it out and when he gets to the infirmary there she is.

Beth. She drops the pack of bandages she's carrying and flings herself at him because she hasn't seen him since the prison fell. But he's seen her. Blood and brains in her hair, bits of skull too.

He asks her how she's here once he can finally manage the power of speech and she tells him it's a weird story. He's in two minds about taking her to Maggie, it'll probably give her a heart attack but it's gonna have to happen sometime so he opts for sooner rather than later.

When she walks through the front door her sister falls off the couch onto her knees, her legs failing her, so Beth comes to her. And of course they cry because who wouldn't? She didn't even know that they'd make it here, she just knew that she dug herself out of her own grave and was alone. By the time they get up off their knees they've gone numb and her voice is horse from sobbing.

She tells them the story as best she can. Daryl sticks around for all of ten seconds before he storms out of the door. But she knew it's be more complicated with Daryl because Daryl's just more complicated full stop.

Judith is by far the most immediately forgiving of the deception, looking at Beth like '_I know you…I like you don't I? You're special to me' _and reaches for Beth's hair like it's an old friend.

Carl's just happy to see her, weary that all this is full on crazy and he might wake up any second so he might as well enjoy it.

Carol takes her face in her hands and in that placid measured way only Carol can manage tells her she's a brave idiot. Her eyes are warm and her smile is barley there and it's just so Carol Beth thinks she might cry again.

'We coulda…coulda…' Rick begins, trying to work out how they could have all walked out of there that day, together. But she stops him, there was no other way with Dawn, tells him to ask Noah who sits on the couch and nods.

And there are all these people she's never met who seem to kind of know her but kind of keep her at arm's length. Everyone does, even Maggie holds back emotionally even though she won't let her go for a second that night and a few days after.

No one quite trusts her. That's something she has to earn. They will forgive but they won't forget.

And Daryl? Well he's the toughest sell of all.

He won't even be in the same room as her, he kind of lurks in the next room to the one she's in. If she leaves that room and enters the one he's in he'll move to another. And so on and so forth until she's chasing him round the house and he just leaves.

Which is what leads her to ask;

'You ever gonna actually talk to me or are you just gonna….skulk?', bending her head around the door frame to where she knows he's…not watching her because he won't even look at her most times she's over but stays close enough to sense her presence in the next room.

She's over for dinner _again. _A family dinner. Only problem is that on the road they all went through stuff that she didn't she doesn't really feel like part of this family so she keeps trying to infiltrate the unit and does it by coming round all the time.

'Ain't got nothin' to say t'you'

And it's the first thing he's said to her since 'C'mon' in the hospital corridor. The second to last thing since 'Go out to the road, I'll meet you there'.

'Ok' she says in a small, soft voice, 'but if you ever do I'll be nothin' but glad to hear it'.

Rick's sitting next her and pats her on the knee after that exchange but says nothing because he honestly doesn't want to take sides. He wouldn't know whose side he'd even be on. He knows Beth's story of events and he knows why she did what she did. But he's seen Daryl's grief and it was brutal. It reminded him of when he lost Lori and if Daryl felt for Beth how he felt for Lori then he can guess at the kind of betrayal that learning that she faked her death would insight.

Carol announces that dinners on the table and everyone makes their way into the dining room which is cramped with all of them in it but would have comfortably hosted dinner parties for a dozen minor politicians once upon a time.

He sits at the end of the table as far away as he can get from her as has become customary and only speaks when spoken to, short sentences and sometimes just a grunt or two. Abraham will not so discreetly roll his eyes at whoever has tried to engage Daryl in conversation, why would they even bother? They know what's up and he needs to get over it in his own time.

Eventually conversation gets going and Rick's telling them about taking Judith to the day care and being ambushed by the mom's.

'So, I hid in this little pink Playhouse. God, it was like the time in the Tank'

And Glenn laughs, the only one from the escapade still standing. He hopes the Morales family are alive and as well as can be hoped for. He thinks that if Beth, 'certain death Beth', is here then maybe he's gonna be walking down the street and that whole family's going to be coming the other way, laughing and waving.

'What's the 'time with the Tank'!?' Tara demands to know.

And so Rick tells the story which morphs into the tale of the department store and the Ballad of how Merle Dixon cut off his own hand which Abraham proposes a toast to because;

'That is one tough son of a bitch!'

And the story continues to what happened back at camp;

'And so I tell him and Daryl's all pissed because I left his brother handcuffed to a roof' Rick says like it was a massive over reaction on Daryl's part and given all they've gone through in comparison it was.

At the other end of the table Daryl is trying like hell not to enjoy the story, pretending that he's not prone and ready to chip in 'Choke Hold's Illegal!'

But before it comes to that Beth cuts in with;

'Ah would be more than pissed if y'left Maggie handcuffed to a roof with nothin' but a hack saw and a prayer!'

To which Daryl shoots up out of his chair and takes his plate leaving the room to sit on the sofa in the living room and the mood drains from the dining room.

It's Sasha who comes after him. Her relationship with Maggie demands it.

'Can you please come in and eat with everyone?'

'Fine here'

'Daryl' she says warningly to which he replies, equally as warning;

'Sasha'

'You don't even know what happened!'

'I know what happened! I was there!'

'There are two sides-'

'There are two sides to her face is what there is Sasha!'

She feels instantly ill, not just at his words but his tone, it's like the moonshine shack all over again only hugging him probably won't make it all better.

'Ah'm…A'hm just gonna go' Beth said quietly, voice shaking.

They're packed in tight in the dining room and she has to squeeze past chairs giving everyone the opportunity to beg her not to go.

'It's fine, really' she assures them, 'Ah know it's gonna take time'

And as she hears him snarl;

'She thinks I'm wastin' another second on her then maybe she did get shot up in the head'.

He and Maggie have it out a couple of hours later.

'You ain't even tryin' to…to make peace with it! She tries so hard with you and you won't even let her say sorry! To explain! I know yours and my hearts hurt the worst but why is my heart the only one healed by this!? Why do you insist on not just keeping it broken but letting Beth be alive break it even more!?' Maggie demanded.

'You don't get it! Ah'm sorry if ah can't forgive her for faking her damn death! You don't think I wanna just forget about it? That my brain'll just accept that what it knows to have happened isn't the truth? This ain't _Total Recall_ Maggie, ah can't just erase shit. And tah ask me to sit at the table with her and pretend is big god damn ask!'

Rick couldn't help but be reminded for the second time that night of the first time he met Daryl; the raw anger, the ranting, the movie references.

There was a knock at the door and Noah bolted towards it before anyone else could, happy for a reprieve.

'Noah' greeted the guy who works with them at the infirmary, out of breath from running 'I'm looking for Beth's sister'.

Noah ushers him in and Maggie takes a well times breath.

'Maggie, this is Frank, he works at the infirmary'

'You have to come, Beth got bought in with her wrists slashed-' is all Daryl hears before he's bolting for the door and sprinting through the streets with Maggie close behind and everyone else close behind her.

The infirmary is a small hospital not far from what's become the centre of town, he sprints diagonally across the town square and runs through a fountain rather than go around it.

'Beth! Beth!' he calls down every hallway until he finds her.

The doctor's picking shards of glass out of her arm, a jagged, uneven, unintentional slash. She's reclined in a bed, paler than usual, those two still-healing scars the only colour in her skin.

'What happened?' he demanded,

'Well I didn't get to finish dinner. I had this jar of olives stashed away. I, erm, fumbled with it. Tried to catch it 'fore it hit the…floor' she tells him weakly, 'but it kinda…smashed and the glass went…in my arm. Was stupid an' tried y'pull it out mah self. S'a lot of blood Daryl' she explained weakly,

'I thought you…'

'Opted out?' she asks him, eyes drooping, 'Wouldn't do that to you…won't do that to you ever again. Still gotta get you to forgive me, not goin' nowhere till I get you to'

'Maybe I'll just hold out forever then' he tells her and before she can respond Maggie's by her side, rolling up her sleeve and demanding that they drain her of all her blood if that's what Beth needs.

The doctor gently tells her that it probably won't come to that. Noah finds some scrub pants for Daryl to change into seeing as his are wet from the fountain. The others go home eventually but Glenn, Maggie and Daryl stay all night, watching Beth sleep, talking quietly and sleeping some themselves. When Glenn's asleep Maggie confesses to Daryl how angry she's been at Beth, a burning, boiling rage that made her want to punch her sister more than once and scream 'How could you do that to me?'

In the morning Glenn eventually convinces Maggie to come home with him to get some food, she'd given some blood and could probably use something to eat.

'You been here all night too?' Beth asks when they're gone and he nods, 'Thanks'

'Mhhm' he mumbles biting his thumb.

The nurse comes round with a basket of applies for the patients and she and Beth are well aquatinted from working together. As she hands the apple to Beth she grins and says;

'I'm gonna start calling you clover' she winks and nudges Daryl, ''cus you're damn lucky Beth'.

Beth can't help smirk at Daryl's discomfort. A shower, a vague nod to a haircut and shave and he looks like a guy you'd look twice at in the street. She'd seen glimpses of it over the years but never thought much about it until that night that now felt like another life time ago.

The doctor comes round not long after that. She's also well acquainted with him but less friendly. If possible he's even more reluctant to let people get close to him that Daryl, then again if anyone knew that Dr Morrow lost a wife, three kids, two brothers, one sister and a dozen nieces and nephews before he ended up here they'd understand.

'Don't see why you can't recover at home so long as you've got someone to take care of you' he said, gesturing to Daryl,

'You good with that?' she asks him and he nods.

When they get to the foot of the stairs in her apartment building she needs to rest before she can contemplate scaling them.

He wants to pick her up like he did that morning in the Funeral Home, the morning of the White Trash Brunch, but he opts for a very serious piggyback instead.

'There'll probably be blood on the floor' she warns as she climbs off his back and pushes the unlocked door open. Occasionally not locking your door and not worrying about your stuff is one of the few positives of the new world order, especially here where it's a co-op. If Merle were here he'd say that the Communists won.

'Not the first time I've seen your…' but he doesn't finish that thought.

When the floor is devoid of blood she just shrugs.

'My neighbour must have cleaned it up'

'You like 'em? You friends with 'em?'

'Yeah, everyone in this block is pretty nice'

She shuts the door behind him and he takes in the IKEA-ness of it all.

'The Narrator from Fight Club live here before?' he asks,

'What?'

'You ain't ever seen Fight Club?' he asks incredulously,

'Naw' she shakes her head, 'Sorry?'

'No, believe me, Ah'm sorry you ain't ever had the privilege'

'If I had any moonshine we could play a Special Edition of 'I Never'' she says brightly, hoping they can joke now.

But that makes Daryl go in on himself, like he can't separate the good times they had and the bad times that followed because it was all the same course of events, they're fused together in his mind and the bad is so black and terrible it makes the good fade to almost nothing.

'If y' wanna go t'sleep or somethin' 's ok by me' he mumbles,

'I was out all night, remember? How'd you sleep?'

'A'right, had less before now'

'Bet your bed at the house is a step up from that casket, huh?'

He goes quiet again but eventually says;

'I ain't slept as good as I did in that casket since'.

There's silence between them and she tentatively reaches for his hand, aware that he could turn at any moment and snatch it away. But he doesn't, he lets her take his hand in hers.

'I really wanna explain everythin' to you, if you wanna hear it now'

He leaned forward, not looking at her, elbows on his knees.

'I'll listen' he very nearly whispered so she takes a breath and begins.

'They couldn't just let me go. There was this power struggle going on and Dawn was losing control, she had to set an example, not to just the other cops but to the people they kept there. So Dawn pulled me into a room with Edwards, that was the doctor there, and told me that if I even thought about walking out that door what few allies she had would gun down everyone who came for me and Carol. This was the only way everyone was gonna have their lives at the end. She couldn't take Noah back, she knew that, couldn't let a successful escapee back in, he might help others escape or even just his success would encourage them to try. So she was gonna keep me but knew that you all wouldn't just accept that, that you'd pull another stunt to get me back. And another and another if you had to. I was gonna be the example to anyone who thought they could just waltz out of Grady before they'd paid back their debt. And keeping me around would make it easier for Dawn to control everyone. I'd be the buffer between the slaves and the cops, report any decent in the ranks, rat on the trouble makers, because they'd trust me, I was one of them. So the plan was to fake it.'

Daryl sat up and took his hand back to run it through his hair, trying to process everything.

'Stuff came out the top o' your head' he insisted, voice breaking half way.

'Donated by one of the Guinea pigs butchered for lunch, add an exploded bullet shell and…well, you saw'

'Damn right' he growled, 'every time I close my fucking eyes I see it'

She takes his hand again and he only offers token resistance.

'An' ah'm so sorry for that, ah am, please believe that'

He's silent and she takes that as permission to continue.

'I wanted to say so much to you but I had to get back to Dawn otherwise her allies woulda opened fire if Dawn thought I was tryin' t'leave'

'You shoulda said! We coulda taken them'

'Everyone got out alive this way'

'Not Officer Ratchet' he snorted,

'No, the plan was that I'd come back, I was supposed to stab her and she was gonna shoot me in self-defence. Could see her finger on the trigger, knew that she'd pull it before she could even consider that you wouldn't care why she did it. There was blood and other Guinea pig …donation down the barrel of Dawns gun, made it look like an entrance wound. I knew it wasn't gonna go her way when I agreed to it because I knew what you'd do'

'So why didn't her 'allies' start firing?'

'The situation was…delicate. They're leader was gone, I knew that they'd have to just…abort and try to make somethin' of their new situation, probably make a grab for power when the threat of you guys was out of the door'

'You didn't know anythin' Beth, nothin' in this world in for sure. You shoulda said! We coulda taken them'

'It wasn't worth the risk, ah wasn't-'

'Don't you even think about finishing that sentence' he warned.

She ran her tongue across her dry lips.

'Edwards, he had the trigger for the bloodpack in my hair'

'So the hospital happened to have some fancy pants 'signal operated' squibs just layin' around?' he asked incredulously.

'That's kind of the weird part'

He gives her a look and he needn't open his mouth because that look can be read by anyone; an _Are you shitting me? This whole thing is the god damn weird part! _look.

She thinks back to Edwards confessing his Fanboy-ness for the Zombie show that filmed outside of Atlanta, when the whole world was going to shit he wasn't rushing to be with his loved ones, he was breaking into the offices of 'The Dead Came Walking', grabbing souvenirs out of the make-up and special effects offices, a bag of stuff that he didn't know what they were at the time but they looked cool with the little gadget that they came with.

'It was like having a tiny bomb tucked in my ponytail. When I woke up my head hurt so bad'

'I had this capsule in my mouth. In World War Two fighter pilots used to have cyanide capsules in their cheek so if they got shot down over enemy lines they could kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner' and she can't for the life of her think why she'd recounting the same history lesson Edwards gave her at Grady that fateful day to Daryl. He stares at her and she figures that he's seen a lot of war movies and knows that already.

'Anyway, this capsule, it had this drug in it, something-something-Pam. It put me into a coma, so deep your heartbeat and pulse is nothin' at all. They were usin' it before The Turn, experimentin' with anaesthetics. Puts you under in seconds, keeps you under for hours'

She imagines that that's the tag line some slick pharmaceutical rep put on it all those years ago. They were probably a Walker now. Maybe they were milling round what remains of her family's farm, or stumbling over the trampled vegetable gardens of the prison or caught in some endless loop of shuffling from wall to wall of the Funeral Home hallway.

'But with Dawn dead, there was no one to stop you takin' my body. Edwards was a coward, he wasn't going to reveal his deception in front of cops that already didn't trust him, so he had to let you walk out with my body. Ah hoped I'd wake up before y'all buried me. Ah can only guess at how I survived being buried alive. Had a lot of time to think on it though. As far as ah can guess the disturbed earth must have had just enough air pockets not to suffocate me'

'Sorry for doin' a half assed job fillin' it in' he scoffed bitterly but she ploughed on.

'The cloth I was wrapped in maybe let me breath without the dirt suffocating me. The panic is what suffocates people when they get stuck places, they freak out that they're gonna run out of air and breathe heavier. Saw that on TV. So there I was, wakin' up and wrapped in my own shroud. I knew right away what had happened and I just started to claw my way up'

'You coulda suffocated and turned into a Walker'

'Didn't though'

'But y'-'

'But ah'm not, that's how it is. Sometimes a whole heap of good luck comes after a whole heap of rotten luck, no rhyme or reason to it. It just…is'.

**A/N: I would like to continue this but may leave this as a One-Shot depending on what my sanity will allow for. Edwards looks like every overgrown Fanboy in my office, that's where that came from.**

**Author's note that is just an angry rant**: There is part of me that wants to believe that Beth will be alive at another point, whether it's because of some masterstroke of writing (as I'm given to understand that the job of a writer is to make stuff up!) that's going to blow our minds (too soon? Yeah, too soon) and that was the plan all along as they've never bought back a character that everyone thought was dead before. How incredible would that be? A genuine season final shocker.

OR (more likely, given the quality of writing this season) because the TWD team have been going through the trash at the Game of Thrones offices. You know they were trying to create something to rival the Red Wedding in the MSF and it's so of pathetic.

OR the petition worked ( p/the-walking-dead-bring-beth-back ) and they've re-shot a scene where something like the last moments of Coda were Beth's imaginings of what would happen if she tried to kill Dawn and the grief it would cause and opts to stay at the hospital so Noah can go free.

If none of these things happen then I can't have allowed myself to be set up for another disappointment, I didn't prepare myself for it in the first place despite the spoilers. I wanted to believe that Fan Girls were a valued part of TWDs viewing figures. Clearly I was wrong. Not even getting a brief Beth/Daryl reunion was just beyond appalling, deeply emotionally unfulfilling and this fuels my probably misguided reasoning that it's not the last we've seen of proper alive Beth. Even more upsetting Beth never got reunited with Judith and that just broke my heart.

Oh well the show was well on its way to ruined anyway (it's amazing that it's so popular now it's on its death bad, it's like a King or a Pope), unless Beth's alive and she is the ********SPOILERS******** old flame of Daryl's that's going to show up in 5b they've shoe horned in some ex that you know is going to be so nauseating it shoves every women still watching firmly into the Caryl camp because for some reason all the TWD writers are madly in love with Carol (no criticism of Carol or McBride, season 3 & 4 Carol was completely perfect and Melissa McBride is a great actress) and want everyone else to be.

And on the 'Nobody is safe' thing they're kind of right. Not the characters, we all know Carol, Daryl, Rick, Michonne, Carl and Judith (in that order) are safe. It's the Fan Tribes that aren't safe (except for Caryl-ers who can be pretty pleased with their choices) because if they'll screw over the fan girls they'll screw over everyone else in order to court the mass market and provide shock and gore for STD ridden frat boys so they can exclaim 'oh man! Did you see that! Right in the head!'


End file.
